Thought for the week - 21 July 2008

Damned if you do and damned if you don't

I don’t often spare a thought for politicians but our Prime Minister seems to be in the situation of ‘damned if you do and damned if you don’t’. I expect our Archbishop feels much the same! Both are faced with seemingly irreconcilable demands. It might not be a good time to ask them about their vocation! And yet…in each I see a reserve of hope and energy that will never give up striving because they both have a vision. A different vision perhaps but something that draws them on… to squeeze between the rock and the hard place!

The Apostle Paul has been there before them! In a bit of a New Testament tongue twister he talked about not doing the good he wanted to do and doing the bad he definitely did not want to do. In other words he shared the common experience of ‘damned if you do and damned if you don’t’!  I’ll bet you’ve been there at some time or another. I’m afraid it might be all too common an experience in the present economic climate. Our Armed Forces are often put in this same dilemma.. ‘damned if you do and damned if you don’t’ ..it seems to be the price of intervention. Or perhaps you’ve experienced difficulties in your personal life and to use a common phrase you can’t seem to win. That’s life! But is that all there is to say?

In what might have been a ‘eureka’ moment, St Paul discovered that Jesus had been through all this…he was not only ‘damned if you do and damned if you don’t’ (read the gospel) but he was damned to death. What suddenly excited Paul was the possibility of breaking out of this seemingly universal condition. Surprisingly, the answer was not in our own faith but in the faith Jesus had in God. Not surprisingly, Paul has a lot more to say on this!

Christians are certainly not immune from being ‘damned if you do and damned if you don’t’ but we are called to show that is not the end of the world.

Venerable Ron Hesketh CB